Since Vince McMahon launched a new company lat year, Alpha Entertainment, to pursue a number of potential entertainment endeavours, rumours have been running rampant WWE Chairman of Board could relaunch a football league. It’s officially on, XFL will be back in 2020.
If the first version of XFL was a “colossal failure”, as McMahon stated in 2001, XFL 2020 is going to be made for the “fans above all”. “We have two years to get ready and to showcase a better quality of the play in comparison to last time”, announced McMahon, “I always wanted to relaunch it and I took the time to make it.”
“We’re listening”, said McMahon, indicating fans, but also players and coaches will have their words to say on how they would re-imagine the game. The new XFL will be fan-centred and with “lots of innovations” with a shorter, faster, family friendly, easier to understand game. McMahon is betting on the 7 months of the year where there’s no football on US television to allow XFL to focus the audience’s attention.
If the name XFL was kept, because “it’s a cool name”, the teams will be all new names, even if they aren’t restrained from bringing old team names and concepts back if that ideas are pitched. XFL will open with 8 teams and a 40-Men roster for a 10-game season.
The quality of the human being will be as important as the quality of the player, he insisted. A player arrested for a DUI, for example, won’t be allowed to play. A player speaking too loudly on social media could be suspended. “It’s about the quality of the player as a person”, he insisted, but “anyone who played by the rules would be invited.”
The safety of the players is going to be apart of the “re-imagining” process. McMahon said they are going to make XFL as safe an environment as possible, football experts will be brought in and medical experts listened to. XFL will provide a faster, fan-centric game that can be played in two hours, it could include removing the half-time.
Fans will be able to customize in how they watch the games on big screens and mobile devices, like how the game should be played or if they want a halftime. The different media that will distribute the game has yet to be defined but all options, including streaming and social media platforms are available to them that were not available to them the first time around. The cities involved will be announced later but “every city is on the radar”, NFL cities too.
As far as WWE is concerned, McMahon confirmed he would not relinquish his position of Chairman of Board and CEO and the two companies, XFL and WWE, would not be related as there would not be cross-overs of talents, announcers or contents. McMahon said he’s going to hire executives to handle everything and this announcement may be the last time we see him talking about the XFL as he doesn’t want to be in front of it.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWAvRIpuj1U]